Australian Languages

[Claire Bowern]

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Please note that the name of the language family is Pama-Nyungan, NOT
Pamanyungen. The name is dervied from two of the words for 'man' (Pama and
Nyunga) which are found in many languages in Australia.
 
Incidentally, with the quality of material that exists on the Tasmanian
languages, I'm surprised that anyone can make any hypotheses about its
genetic affiliations at all. When there are only a few hundred words in
orthopgraphies that might represent anything it wouldn't be surprising if
there were "cognates" with every language family in the world.
 
Finally, although it is true that the Torres Strait has only been a Strait
since the last Ice Age, I believe that Tasmania was a separate island long
before that - certainly the comparative depths of Bass Strait and the
Torres Strait would support this. While this doesn't disprove the
Indo-Pacific theory, it makes the time at which Indo-Pacific immigrants
must have reached Tasmania considerably earlier).
 
Claire Bowern
 
 
_____________________________
Centre for Linguistic Typology
Australian National University,
ACT, 0200,  AUSTRALIA
Ph: +61 2 6249 2222